Thursday, August 21, 2014

Courts - "Today’s Tech: A Federal Judge And His iPad (Part 1)"

Nicole Black of Above the Law interviews Judge Richard Wesley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She writes:

In this two-part series, I’m going to share with you how he uses his iPad to increase his efficiency on the bench and what he thinks about the effects of technology on the legal profession.

A sample:

Judge Wesley uses his iPad in a number ways, all of which provide him with increased flexibility, convenience, and efficiency. “I use it to prepare for an upcoming sitting. My secretary downloads all briefs and records. I review the files, add bookmarks, highlight sections, and add comments on them and highlight aspects of them. I also add comment boxes in which I list questions I want to ask about a particular section. Then I synchronize the changes with my hard drive in my chambers so the document no longer resides on my iPad,” he explains. “Also, my clerks produce bench memos for me, which I mark up, and they also include hyperlinks to the cases referred to so that clicking on the link takes me right into Westlaw.”

According to Judge Wesley, one of the greatest benefits of using an iPad is that it allows him to better prepare for oral arguments: “I pride myself on my preparation. When I’m on the bench with my iPad and an attorney refers to a document, I often see some of my colleagues grab their volumes and flip through the pages, looking for the correct page. But not me. Oftentimes, I’ve already bookmarked and highlighted the section referred to and can start to read it out loud even before the attorney does,” he laughs. “I find it often shocks them when I do that!”